Lib Dems to force vote on creating new customs union with EU

Former pupils at Dulwich College have made shocking claims about the Reform leader’s behaviour at school – which he denies. Daniel Boffey reports Peter Ettedgui is a well-known film-maker. But 40 years ago he was a nervous boy starting out at Dulwich College in South London. “I was 13. I’d come from a fairly small school into this slightly intimidating, kind of gothic structure. That was huge.” He loved performing and soon found his niche in drama, he told Annie Kelly. But one boy shocked him: Nigel Farage. “Once he found out I was Jewish, you know, that was…

After 14 years of Tory rule, the Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer thought he had seen it all. Westminster would surely tick along nicely once Keir Starmer’s party took over. How wrong he was … I feel I should probably start with an apology. A few days after the 2024 general election, I wrote that it felt as if the grownups were back in charge. It wasn’t as if I was carried away by the vision of Keir Starmer or the charisma of Rachel Reeves. More that I felt we had regained a basic level of competence. That politics would…

Alert says Beijing trying to recruit British sources in parliament, even if potential gains may be unclear An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred. It may seem obvious, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful ministry of state security (MSS) still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try…